Star Trek (1966) 2.06

The Doomsday Machine

The Enterprise finds the USS Constellation badly damaged in L-370 a star system in which most of the planets have been destroyed. Captain Kirk, Doctor McCoy, Mister Scott and three other officers beam aboard the Constellation to try and figure out what happened. They only find one survivor aboard the Constellation, its captain, Commodore Matt Decker.

Decker is in shock and can tell them nothing at first. Once he regains his faculties he explains that he beamed the rest of the crew of the Constellation down to the third planet and stayed aboard by himself to deal with the thing that ravaged the Constellation and most of the rest of the L-370. The third planet was destroyed and the Constellation was damaged extensively by a device that Kirk says must be like a Doomsday device of old.

Kirk talks Commodore Decker into returning to the Enterprise with Doctor McCoy. The Doomsday Machine returns just after McCoy and Decker have beamed back to the Enterprise. Decker insists that they must attack it, destroy it, before it destroys anyone else. Mister Spock disagrees. Commodore Decker pulls rank and directs Sulu to attack the Doomsday Machine.

The Enterprise's attacks prove fruitless. Communication with Kirk and the others aboard the Constellation is lost. Decker continues to engage the Doomday Machine until the Enterprise suffers a considerable amount of damage. Commodore Decker still wants to continue to attack the Doomsday Machine but Mister Spock points out he will have to relieve him of command if he doesn't try to evade the Doomsday Machine's attacks.

Decker grudgingly agrees to go along with Spock's suggested course of action. Contact with the Constellation is restored. Kirk is stunned when he hears what's been going on and why. He orders Spock to take command of the Enterprise. Decker doesn't like it but he stands down.  Decker steals a shuttlecraft and attempts to use it to destroy the Doomsday Machine. His ploy results in his death, and the destruction of the shuttle, but it gives Kirk an idea.

Kirk has Scott rig the engines of the Constellation to blow. Kirk sets the Constellation on a head on collision course with the Doomsday Machine. Kirk and the others beam out of there before it is too late. The explosion of the Constellation proves to be enough and the Doomsday Machine is stopped.

Thoughts

Uhura and Chekov are not in this episode. Uhura is replaced by another communications officer, Lieutenant Palmer. There is no explanation given for her absence from the bridge.

There were six members of the landing party but two of them were only seen a few times. They presumably were still aboard the Constellation until they returned with the others to the Enterprise with Scott but they were not seen or heard from after Doctor McCoy and Commodore Decker returned to the Enterprise, midway through the episode. The only member of the away team (other than Kirk, McCoy, and Scott) to appear throughout the episode was Washburn.

Lieutenant Kyle made his seventh of 11 appearances in this episode. He spent all of his time in this episode in the transporter room.

There was a fair amount of updated special effects in this episode. It was bit jarring the way they jumped back and forth between the early 21st century special effects and sets from the late 1960s. I remember seeing this episode back in the 1980s. I don't recall exactly what the special effects were like back then.

I enjoyed this episode very much. I love how Commodore Decker took charge and Mister Spock feels as though he can't do anything about it, at first. This is an upper tier episode for me although the heavy use of updated special effects male me want to boot it down to the middle tier. It's the combination of the human drama and the sci-fi story that really did it for me.

Notes

The first choice to play the part of Commodore Matt Decker was Robert Ryan, according to Memory Alpha, but apparently he was unavailable at the time. I saw Robert Ryan fairly recently in The Set-Up (1949)/

William Windom played the part of Commodore Matt Decker. He reprised the role in an episode of Star Trek: New Voyages. He appeared in two episodes of The Twilight Zone (1959). He appeared in three episodes of The Invaders, the first of which was 1.08 Doomsday Minus One

Elizabeth Rogers played the part of Lieutenant Palmer. This is the first of two episodes of this show in which she appeared. She also played Palmer in her second appearance.

Richard Compton played the part of Washburn. This is the first of two episodes of this show in which he appeared. He played a different character in his second appearance. He later became a director and has considerably more credits on IMDb as a director than as an actor. He directed one episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, 1.10 Haven.

Norman Spinrad wrote this episode, the only episode of this show that he wrote.

This is the 10th of 15 episodes of this show that Marc Daniels directed. The previous episode he directed was 2.04 Mirror, Mirror.